


The Watcher at 50

by nothorse



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Summer of Giles 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 03:02:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4163196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothorse/pseuds/nothorse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alphabet of moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Watcher at 50

Giles likes to think he's an **asset** to the new council, a researcher and experienced watcher. He likes to think he is the trusted experienced voice when it comes to dealing with slayers in distress, emotional, physical or otherwise. He likes to think so, but he's not entirely sure.

Giles sits on the **board** of the new council. He's the one voice that is around from before the fall of Sunnydale. He's also the only one who is not the head of some department or other. 

When the Jean, the council chief doctor called him in the evening telling him, she needed to talk about his lab results, a cold sweat broke out on his back and he had a long walk to get the shakes under control. And yet nobody used _that word_ until after his surgery when the final lab results came back clean. You only name the enemy once he is vanquished. Demon or **cancer** , the rules aren't that different.

Of all the Scoobies, he is probably closest to **Dawn**. Common interests, maybe. Or maybe it's because he never had to act as the big bad watcher to her. Maybe because she is untraumatized enough to not have to forgive him for the times he did anyway. Or, and this is something he hopes for sometimes in the quiet hours, it's because there is an almost parental bond between them. He may have been fired once for loving Buffy as a father, but Dawn is the daughter he would have loved to have.

Most of the time, he is safe in the embrace of his book shelves and card catalogues, but he still knows how to wield a weapon and in an **emergency** he will still strap on a sword and take a crossbow. He does wish those weren't so damn often, though.

To be honest, once he was tapped to be the watcher to the current slayer, he never expected to reach **fifty**. Buffy used to mention her expiration date, but watchers, active watchers tended to reach theirs together with their slayer or before them, being a little more breakable. Yet here he is, comfortably ensconced in a library and currently even unconcussed.

The council used to be a place for stodgy old codgers smoking cigars and pipes and discussing demonology with a decidedly theoretical bent. These days there are dozens of **girls** everywhere, slayers all doing all kinds of jobs. Occasionally, very occasionally Giles yearns for the academic gravitas. But mostly he enjoys the far livelier company.

He never felt quite right in America. He is to quintessentially english, he thinks. He is so much more comfortable in a place where there is a certain depth of history, a weight of centuries pushing down on buildings, nature and inhabitants alike. History is **home**.

Sometimes Giles notices his age. For example he has these attacks of misanthropy when the new slayer contingent starts to communicate at the top of their voices only. After a moment of introspection though, he notices that he starts to resemble his father's colleagues and forcefully pushes all **irritation** aside.

One of the small **joys** of Giles' position at the council is to confuse the new girls. There a few things as satisfying as the open mouths of young slayers when the stodgy old researcher turns up in leather on an old bike. 

**Kennedy** is a bright young woman, who is very good for Willow. And that is all Giles is willing to say on this subject. He will never talk about the times he has had the misfortune to stumble upon the two using office furniture in a non-approved manner. 

Giles can admit to himself that he is no **leader**. He may be a mentor, a teacher, an advisor, but he is not the leader and he is glad not to be.

The stacks at the council library are a **maze**. Literally. It was the first thing Giles took up, working with Xander, to turn the shelves into a confusing maze of tight spaces in order to provide some protection should something inimical gain entry. There are monthly drills running the maze for all library personnel.

While the new guard sees Giles as an old stalwart, he is completely aware that to the remnants of the old staff, those few that survived the First, he is **notorious** as the young rebellious punk who overturned centuries of tradition. He rather enjoys both reputations.

It is no surprise that Giles thrives on **order**. He is after all a librarian at heart and chaos, while inevitable makes this librarian's heart ache. That is why he always takes a day re-shelving books and updating the card catalog once the latest apocalypse is over.

He hasn't gone on **patrol** with a slayer for ages now. That particular duty is a young person's game and greying watchers are no longer required. He does miss it sometimes. Less for the concussions and contusions, but for the camaraderie and bonding.

Would he -- if asked -- go back into the field as a watcher? Probably not. Not anymore. He used to look down on the old men at the council houses but he finds that he quite likes it these days and resents the annual apocalypse season for disturbing the **quiet** work.

You don't make it to fifty without **regrets**. Not if you live on the frontline of a small covert war. And yet, Giles rarely regrets things he did, but words he said -- or worse didn't say.

Being more breakable than a slayer and not gifted with their healing, watchers tend to accumulate **scars**. Sometimes under the shower, Giles traces the lines and reminds himself of the decisions that lead to them, pondering whether he would do the same again.

Giles knows that there is no longer perfect **trust** between the remaining Scoobies. To many issues never talked out loud, to many abandonments of each other. Not out in the open, but those occasional questions that should not have to be asked, those looks that should not be there.

For eight years Giles was on the front lines, was a decisive factor in the war. He is honestly not sure if he was nudged to the side lines or if he sidled away on his own. Nowadays he sits and studies, provides information and counsel. He prefers it that way, unobtrusively being **useful**.

He still thinks the fall of Sunnydale was a **victory**. Unfortunately it wasn't _the_ victory. But still.

In the early days of Sunnydale, he may have looked at **Willow** as a kind of protégé, a very junior watcher. In between, he looked at her with scorn, compassion, affection and exaspe ration. These days it is love and admiration for a dear friend.

Giles would have never thought he'd grow to admire **Xander**. The goofy boy has grown into a decent man. Quite a different man and journey than Giles' own, but a man he's glad to call friend. 

Giles supposes fifty isn't actually all that old. The old researchers at the council were in their seventies and still considered spry. But the slayers and the new personnel are just so damn **young**. 

And while they all take their jobs seriously and the threats they face, when summer training for the new slayers rolls around, the estate is less of an academic retreat and more of a rambunctious **zoo**. 


End file.
